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Made in us
Regular Dakkanaut





even with some vehicles going up to T9 now, there's really no difference between some weapons, and two weapons with similar stats except the S is different by 1, it just comes down to which has more shots...mostly thinking about the heavy bolter and autocannon here.

as it stand AC is only really better against T7 targets on an individual shot basis. everything else is pretty much the same. upping toughness ceiling to 12 or 14 means the AC can still be better at killing medium vehicles, and be flat out better against super heavies than the HB.

not only that but it provides a much bigger difference between various units. on a scale going to 12 a space marine can be T5 gravis marine T6 no problem allowing for guardsmen to be T4 (their armor) and leaving GSC neophytes at and gretchin at T3

a scout sentinel can be T6 or T7 while an armored sentinel can be T8 or T9. a Russ T10 or 11, a Dorn T12 and a baneblade T14

similar for marine vehicles. land speeders can be T6 stormspeeders T8, impulsors T9, gladiators T10, repulsors T11 or T12, landraiders T12, marine super heavies T14

i would also then add a rule that any attack S half or less of a target's T cannot wound that target, or a hard cut off, like S4 cannot wound T10 or above, or something like that to put an end to spamming high shot low strength weapons as all rounders that can shave a wound or two off a super heavy reliably every turn.

this allows the next edition to reuse current weapon stats/rules, but tones down the lethality of game by huge margins.
   
Made in dk
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Heavy bolter should be damage 1, issue fixed.
   
Made in it
Waaagh! Ork Warboss




Italy

Sorry, but I don't buy it. Lethality can easily be toned down without these kind of changes, it's GW's decision to keep it this high.

Increasing toughness would only add more granularity, not less lethality. Why do you think that with higher toughness also weapons wouldn't increase their strenght?

Reduce the number of shots/attacks of many weapons or units, reduce or even remove the abilities to increase S, AP and damage, remove any form of re-rolls and then job's done. Those are the needed changes to reduce lethality.

Then of course more granularity could be nice as well, but I think both S and T could be addressed and increased for some stuff, not only T. If anything more than increasing T values the easiest fix would be reducing the damage characteristics: I mean only a few weapons could have Damage2 or Damage3 and basically nothing higher than Damage3.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2022/06/25 09:31:13


 
   
Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut




I think its a bad design for supposedly anti-tank guns to be wounding tanks on 5s. Obviously it helps survivability in a rounded sense - just like high invuls would (until ignoring them becomes common place) - but it also serves to make damage more random. And I don't think that's good for the game. You can say its part and parcel of a dice game - but "I roll well and blow your 250 point tank up" versus "I roll badly and do zero damage" is a massive swing in outcomes.

Autocannons already struggle for this - due to low S, low AP and only 2 damage if you do get through. And then all the sort of vehicles you think Autocannons would be good against (i.e. Ork buggies) tend to have -1 damage to completely cripple their output.

In practice there really isn't any point having lots of units with different T unless you want lots of weapons with different S. If I'm playing a faction like DE, Orks etc, that only really has an S8 anti-tank gun, its kind of pointless to have T9, T10, T12 etc. I'm reduced to fishing for 5s regardless.
   
Made in us
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Annandale, VA

Tyel wrote:
I think its a bad design for supposedly anti-tank guns to be wounding tanks on 5s. Obviously it helps survivability in a rounded sense - just like high invuls would (until ignoring them becomes common place) - but it also serves to make damage more random. And I don't think that's good for the game. You can say its part and parcel of a dice game - but "I roll well and blow your 250 point tank up" versus "I roll badly and do zero damage" is a massive swing in outcomes.

Autocannons already struggle for this - due to low S, low AP and only 2 damage if you do get through. And then all the sort of vehicles you think Autocannons would be good against (i.e. Ork buggies) tend to have -1 damage to completely cripple their output.

In practice there really isn't any point having lots of units with different T unless you want lots of weapons with different S. If I'm playing a faction like DE, Orks etc, that only really has an S8 anti-tank gun, its kind of pointless to have T9, T10, T12 etc. I'm reduced to fishing for 5s regardless.


One-in-three really isn't bad as far as outcome distribution; it's when you start fishing for 6s that it gets real swingy. D6 damage (or even modified, like D6+2) is more variable.

I'd say a bigger issue is that when you get meltaguns and heavy bolters wounding on the same value, it gets harder for the anti-tank weapons to compete- they need extreme damage output (in this case, an average of 6 damage) just to be equal, and that really brings us back to square 1. Even if heavy bolters are D1, you see this issue with a lot of high-volume low-S weapons.

The core issue is that the current wound table system reduces the impact of S and T compared to the old one, stretching out the zones where a weapon wounds on 3+ or 5+. The old system was more 'compressed', since a T shift of just +2 would take a weapon from wounding on 4s to wounding on 6s. In the current system, you need extreme values just to get 2+ or 6+, and that has knock-on effects for other weapons.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/06/25 16:04:46


   
Made in au
Owns Whole Set of Skullz Techpriests






Versteckt in den Schatten deines Geistes.

Lascannons used to hit AV14 on a 5+. I don't see the issue. Some things should be tough.

Besides, the problem isn't things having trouble wounding other things. The problem is anything can wound anything.

Industrial Insanity - My Terrain Blog
"GW really needs to understand 'Less is more' when it comes to AoS." - Wha-Mu-077

 
   
Made in us
Regular Dakkanaut





 Blackie wrote:
Sorry, but I don't buy it. Lethality can easily be toned down without these kind of changes, it's GW's decision to keep it this high.

Increasing toughness would only add more granularity, not less lethality. Why do you think that with higher toughness also weapons wouldn't increase their strenght?

Reduce the number of shots/attacks of many weapons or units, reduce or even remove the abilities to increase S, AP and damage, remove any form of re-rolls and then job's done. Those are the needed changes to reduce lethality.

Then of course more granularity could be nice as well, but I think both S and T could be addressed and increased for some stuff, not only T. If anything more than increasing T values the easiest fix would be reducing the damage characteristics: I mean only a few weapons could have Damage2 or Damage3 and basically nothing higher than Damage3.
mostly because we've already had toughness in that range...except back then it was called armor value.
if your tank is T12, suddenly S6 weapons are a lot less likely to wound. if your tank is T14 S7 weapons are a lot less likely to wound. if your transport is T9 suddenly S9 is a lot less likely to wound. less likely to wound means less lethal...especially if we institute that whole rule where a weapon can't wound a target with a T more than twice the weapon's S sudeenly S5 weapons are no longer any concern to T9+ vehicles...which would likely be things like rhinos/impulsors and chimeras...
   
Made in us
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 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Lascannons used to hit AV14 on a 5+. I don't see the issue. Some things should be tough.

Besides, the problem isn't things having trouble wounding other things. The problem is anything can wound anything.
Aye, fix the wound chart.

And They Shall Not Fit Through Doors!!!

Tyranid Army Progress -- With Classic Warriors!:
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/743240.page#9671598 
   
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Blackie wrote:Sorry, but I don't buy it. Lethality can easily be toned down without these kind of changes, it's GW's decision to keep it this high.

Increasing toughness would only add more granularity, not less lethality. Why do you think that with higher toughness also weapons wouldn't increase their strenght?

Reduce the number of shots/attacks of many weapons or units, reduce or even remove the abilities to increase S, AP and damage, remove any form of re-rolls and then job's done. Those are the needed changes to reduce lethality.

Largely agree with this. I like the basic bones of the way vehicles are currently handled. The hyper lethality of the game seems to have more to do with power creep than with the core rules of the game. Ctrl+z a lot of the changes made from around the time of 8th edition Marines 2.0 onward, and I feel like you have a pretty reasonable level of lethality.

Alternatively, we could just give everything in the game more wounds so that people can enjoy their buffs while still only taking out X% of the target's hitpoints with a successful attack.

johnpjones1775 wrote:mostly because we've already had toughness in that range...except back then it was called armor value.
if your tank is T12, suddenly S6 weapons are a lot less likely to wound. if your tank is T14 S7 weapons are a lot less likely to wound. if your transport is T9 suddenly S9 is a lot less likely to wound. less likely to wound means less lethal...especially if we institute that whole rule where a weapon can't wound a target with a T more than twice the weapon's S sudeenly S5 weapons are no longer any concern to T9+ vehicles...which would likely be things like rhinos/impulsors and chimeras...


So looking at your opening post...
even with some vehicles going up to T9 now, there's really no difference between some weapons, and two weapons with similar stats except the S is different by 1, it just comes down to which has more shots...mostly thinking about the heavy bolter and autocannon here.

I feel like spreading out the Toughness would actually just result in more of the problem you're describing; not less. The nice thing about how S/T values line up right now, is that the values of 3-9 all create meaningful break points.

S4 wounds guardsmen and eldar better than S3. S5 wound smarines and T8 targets better than S4. S6 is better than S5 against T3 infantry making it a great value for anti-infantry weapons, but it's not meaningfully better than S5 against most vehicles making S5 and S6 better against heavy vehicles than small arms fire but still pretty bad against vehicles. That said, S5 and S6 are probably the most awkwardly overlapping values in this range because the difference only really matters against T3 and against (relatively rare) T5/ and T6. S7 has even odds of wounding most tanks including most transports. S8 will wound both "standard" tanks and heavier (T8) vehicles more reliably than S7. S9 is meaningfully better against T8 tanks than S8, but it's not significantly better against anything else making it the value you give a weapon when you want said weapon to be an "anti-heavy-tank" weapon.

If you spread out the Toughness values, you basically create more of that awkward S5/S6 overlap. If a rhino becomes T9, then suddenly a krak missile loses one of its main advantages over an autocannon shot. If you make a rhino T10, then lascannons and krak missiles are basically the same against them (save for a single point of AP difference.) If you up the Strength values to roughly fit them into the same comparative ranges they hold now (i.e. making an autocannon and a krak missile S10 and S11 respectively compared to the rhino's T10 so that they wound on 4+ and 3+ like they do now), then you run into that awkward S5/6 overlap where S11 and S12 are functionally the same thing more often than not.



H.B.M.C. wrote:Lascannons used to hit AV14 on a 5+. I don't see the issue. Some things should be tough.

The problem with having your expensive weapons with a low number of shots only wounding 1/3rd of the time is that it's just plain unsatisfying. Have you ever played a video game where an enemy is frustratingly durable? Not a powerful enemy that you're at risk of losing to, but one that just takes forever to chip away at? One that's tough enough to make your attacks feel less viscerally satisfying? That's the feeling of a lascannon that fails to hurt its target 2/3rds of the time. (More than that once you factor in to-hit rolls and saves.)

Additionally, making damage unreliable means that the attacks that do go through have to be more meaningful (because you're going to lose anti-tank guns every round of the game, and we don't want tanks to be functionally invulnerable once half your anti-tank is gone.) This, in turn, means that we're sliding back towards that territory where one or two moderately lucky shots can take out a tank. So to be slightly hyperbolic, think back to when land raiders could get one-shot by a single lucky bright lance. This is doubly true if you're making vehicles immune to small arms fire.

So you risk ending up with the worst of both worlds. One player is frustrated that none of his small arms are allowed to interact with your tanks, and you're frustrated that your land raider just got one-shotted. There's room to avoid some of the old extremes that I'm describing here, but only so much room.

Again, giving things more Wounds might be a better solution than spreading out Toughness values or making vehicles immune to lasguns. Giving things more wounds means that you can reliably hurt a land raider with a lascannon, but you won't be one-shotting the land raider with a lascannon. Additionally, weapons with high Damage stats become more important compared to low-damage weapons. Sure, plasmaguns will wound a rhino just as often as a krak missile, but a D2 plasmagun shot might only be taking out 10% of the target's health where a krak missile is taking out 25%. (Exact percentages subject to change depending on the exact values things are assigned, obviously.) And a lasgun taking out 1% of a landraider's health really shouldn't be a big deal.

Besides, the problem isn't things having trouble wounding other things. The problem is anything can wound anything.

I hear this a lot from people who want tanks to be totally immune to small arms fire, but are small arms vs tanks actually a problem? How often are you losing land raiders to lasguns and splinter rifles? Is it fair to say that it's more the principle of the thing than an actual problem that you encounter on the tabletop?


ATTENTION
. Psychic tests are unfluffy. Your longing for AV is understandable but misguided. Your chapter doesn't need a separate codex. Doctrines should go away. Being a "troop" means nothing. This has been a cranky service announcement. You may now resume your regularly scheduled arguing.
 
   
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Longtime Dakkanaut




I wouldn't go all the way to T12. I'd cap it to T10. Then any S20 weapons can still wound it on 2+.
   
Made in de
Witch Hunter in the Shadows



Aachen

Jarms48 wrote:
I wouldn't go all the way to T12. I'd cap it to T10. Then any S20 weapons can still wound it on 2+.

I'd say there're enough tricks that give +1 towound to justify higher T values than T10, there's no need to have a cap at all - but right now, id say T12 for a tough superheavy/titan sounds right.
   
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Cadia

Wyldhunt wrote:
The hyper lethality of the game seems to have more to do with power creep than with the core rules of the game.


Exactly. A basic marine lascannon does ~1.3 damage per turn to a typical T8/3+ tank. IOW, an average of more than a full game of shooting to destroy a tank. The problem is when power creep and rules bloat give you a special snowflake primaris unit with each marine dual-wielding lascannons, except now they're primaris lascannons so they're D3+3 damage instead of D6. And of course now there's an aura of re-roll to hit, a stratagem for re-roll to wound, a stratagem to fire twice, a stratagem to deal D6+6 mortal wounds on every 6 to hit, and a stratagem to make all of your hit dice into 6s. And oh look, now your squad is deleting a tank company per turn while the rest of the codex is completely useless in comparison.

But don't worry, give it a few months and the new guard codex will have T30/W100/Sv0+/1++/1+++ stat lines for LRBTs and that lascannon squad will get another round of buffs so they can cope with the new tanks.

THE PLANET BROKE BEFORE THE GUARD! 
   
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Lethality is not a bug, it's a feature.
If 40K is so lethal, like it is right now, you can put a lot of minis on the table, have very granular rules and individual customization options and still finish a standard 2000 pts game within 2:30h.
If it were any less lethal, in order to finish within that magical timeframe that works so well for events, you would need to either change the rules or play with less toys.
And guess what: GW wants us to buy more minis, not less.


 
   
Made in us
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Springfield, VA

Wyldhunt wrote:

Besides, the problem isn't things having trouble wounding other things. The problem is anything can wound anything.

I hear this a lot from people who want tanks to be totally immune to small arms fire, but are small arms vs tanks actually a problem? How often are you losing land raiders to lasguns and splinter rifles? Is it fair to say that it's more the principle of the thing than an actual problem that you encounter on the tabletop?


Currently, a guardsman with a Lascannon will do .17*3.5 (so about .6) wounds to the upcoming Chaos Land Raider per shot.

A guardsmen with a lasgun and FRFSRF (and in Rapid Fire) will do 0.15 wounds to the same target.

In other words, the Lascannon is only about four times as effective as a guy with a rifle against one of the highest durability targets in the game (T9, 2+, AoC).

So, considering you can get well over four times as many guardsmen as you can lascannons in most lists...

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/06/26 12:04:36


 
   
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 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Wyldhunt wrote:

Besides, the problem isn't things having trouble wounding other things. The problem is anything can wound anything.

I hear this a lot from people who want tanks to be totally immune to small arms fire, but are small arms vs tanks actually a problem? How often are you losing land raiders to lasguns and splinter rifles? Is it fair to say that it's more the principle of the thing than an actual problem that you encounter on the tabletop?


Currently, a guardsman with a Lascannon will do .17*3.5 (so about .6) wounds to the upcoming Chaos Land Raider per shot.

A guardsmen with a lasgun and FRFSRF (and in Rapid Fire) will do 0.15 wounds to the same target.

In other words, the Lascannon is only about four times as effective as a guy with a rifle against one of the highest durability targets in the game (T9, 2+, AoC).

So, considering you can get well over four times as many guardsmen as you can lascannons in most lists...

...who are firing AP0 D1 weapons from 12" away on T3 W1 5+ bodies (at least until the new 'dex drops), and who need nearly a full squad to do a single actual wound to the LR (D is an int, not a float), and they need an Order to do that (something you haven't given the Lascannon), and if you want to do more than a single wound you're basically going to need to at least partially bubble wrap the LR with Guardsmen (which would be trivial to prevent if other units or terrain are present)...

Don't get me wrong, I agree that HotE was a lazy bandaid over a sucking chest wound, but I'm skeptical as to how well the math would ever realistically translate to actual tabletop results - we're kind of in "assuming perfectly spherical, frictionless cows" territory here.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/06/26 12:53:49


 
   
Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut




I don't mind people blazing away with an infantry squad and doing 1-2 wounds to a tank. Its an inefficient action in most circumstances. When Hammer of the Emperor came out people did the whole "what if you could get 100s of Guardsmen in FRFSRF and rapid fire and delete everything" - and many weeks on, it seems safe to say "no, no you can't". Even things like S5+ AP-3~ 2 damage with stacked rerolls seems less like a tank killer than it was back in 8th.

Really though the problem is that anti-tank guns are a mess - and vehicle defensive profiles are likewise a mess.

Consider the Autocannon base. 2 shots, S7 AP-1 2 damage. There just isn't a defensive profile into which this is very good. Its about 15% better than a lascannon into say a Raider (T6 4+/5++) - where the Lascannon's higher S and AP is wasted. It might be a bit more reliable - but just as D6 damage weapons can turn up as 1s, they can also turn up as 5s and 6s. Points generate a bit of an improvement (i.e. an autocannon is usually cheaper than a lascannon) - but its marginal on the marginal. (By contrast, shoot a lascannon into say a Rhino, and its 2.3 times as good as an Autocannon - i.e. miles better.)

If T6 and only a 5+/6+ was a more common profile, perhaps there would be a spot for the Autocannon. But there isn't. And as said, the few things you'd expect to be vulnerable like buggies have -1 damage for inexplicable reasons.

Imo infantry works better. Because you have T3, T4, T5. And by and large, higher T & higher Sv go together. So you can have bags of S3, S4 shooting that are your horde clearers. You can have your S5 AP-3 2 damage guns which are your anti-Marine weapons (and okay into Custodes, Crisis suits, Tyranid warriors etc). And this is because of how the maths of the wound table works. The problem is you need T6 to be "T3" of the vehicle world - and it just isn't.

The fact GW is now going "uh... well "real anti-tank" should be S12-S14, ignore all saves" is further skewing things.
   
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Wyldhunt wrote:
Blackie wrote:Sorry, but I don't buy it. Lethality can easily be toned down without these kind of changes, it's GW's decision to keep it this high.

Increasing toughness would only add more granularity, not less lethality. Why do you think that with higher toughness also weapons wouldn't increase their strenght?

Reduce the number of shots/attacks of many weapons or units, reduce or even remove the abilities to increase S, AP and damage, remove any form of re-rolls and then job's done. Those are the needed changes to reduce lethality.

Largely agree with this. I like the basic bones of the way vehicles are currently handled. The hyper lethality of the game seems to have more to do with power creep than with the core rules of the game. Ctrl+z a lot of the changes made from around the time of 8th edition Marines 2.0 onward, and I feel like you have a pretty reasonable level of lethality.

Alternatively, we could just give everything in the game more wounds so that people can enjoy their buffs while still only taking out X% of the target's hitpoints with a successful attack.

johnpjones1775 wrote:mostly because we've already had toughness in that range...except back then it was called armor value.
if your tank is T12, suddenly S6 weapons are a lot less likely to wound. if your tank is T14 S7 weapons are a lot less likely to wound. if your transport is T9 suddenly S9 is a lot less likely to wound. less likely to wound means less lethal...especially if we institute that whole rule where a weapon can't wound a target with a T more than twice the weapon's S sudeenly S5 weapons are no longer any concern to T9+ vehicles...which would likely be things like rhinos/impulsors and chimeras...


So looking at your opening post...
even with some vehicles going up to T9 now, there's really no difference between some weapons, and two weapons with similar stats except the S is different by 1, it just comes down to which has more shots...mostly thinking about the heavy bolter and autocannon here.

I feel like spreading out the Toughness would actually just result in more of the problem you're describing; not less. The nice thing about how S/T values line up right now, is that the values of 3-9 all create meaningful break points.

S4 wounds guardsmen and eldar better than S3. S5 wound smarines and T8 targets better than S4. S6 is better than S5 against T3 infantry making it a great value for anti-infantry weapons, but it's not meaningfully better than S5 against most vehicles making S5 and S6 better against heavy vehicles than small arms fire but still pretty bad against vehicles. That said, S5 and S6 are probably the most awkwardly overlapping values in this range because the difference only really matters against T3 and against (relatively rare) T5/ and T6. S7 has even odds of wounding most tanks including most transports. S8 will wound both "standard" tanks and heavier (T8) vehicles more reliably than S7. S9 is meaningfully better against T8 tanks than S8, but it's not significantly better against anything else making it the value you give a weapon when you want said weapon to be an "anti-heavy-tank" weapon.

If you spread out the Toughness values, you basically create more of that awkward S5/S6 overlap. If a rhino becomes T9, then suddenly a krak missile loses one of its main advantages over an autocannon shot. If you make a rhino T10, then lascannons and krak missiles are basically the same against them (save for a single point of AP difference.) If you up the Strength values to roughly fit them into the same comparative ranges they hold now (i.e. making an autocannon and a krak missile S10 and S11 respectively compared to the rhino's T10 so that they wound on 4+ and 3+ like they do now), then you run into that awkward S5/6 overlap where S11 and S12 are functionally the same thing more often than not.



H.B.M.C. wrote:Lascannons used to hit AV14 on a 5+. I don't see the issue. Some things should be tough.

The problem with having your expensive weapons with a low number of shots only wounding 1/3rd of the time is that it's just plain unsatisfying. Have you ever played a video game where an enemy is frustratingly durable? Not a powerful enemy that you're at risk of losing to, but one that just takes forever to chip away at? One that's tough enough to make your attacks feel less viscerally satisfying? That's the feeling of a lascannon that fails to hurt its target 2/3rds of the time. (More than that once you factor in to-hit rolls and saves.)

Additionally, making damage unreliable means that the attacks that do go through have to be more meaningful (because you're going to lose anti-tank guns every round of the game, and we don't want tanks to be functionally invulnerable once half your anti-tank is gone.) This, in turn, means that we're sliding back towards that territory where one or two moderately lucky shots can take out a tank. So to be slightly hyperbolic, think back to when land raiders could get one-shot by a single lucky bright lance. This is doubly true if you're making vehicles immune to small arms fire.

So you risk ending up with the worst of both worlds. One player is frustrated that none of his small arms are allowed to interact with your tanks, and you're frustrated that your land raider just got one-shotted. There's room to avoid some of the old extremes that I'm describing here, but only so much room.

Again, giving things more Wounds might be a better solution than spreading out Toughness values or making vehicles immune to lasguns. Giving things more wounds means that you can reliably hurt a land raider with a lascannon, but you won't be one-shotting the land raider with a lascannon. Additionally, weapons with high Damage stats become more important compared to low-damage weapons. Sure, plasmaguns will wound a rhino just as often as a krak missile, but a D2 plasmagun shot might only be taking out 10% of the target's health where a krak missile is taking out 25%. (Exact percentages subject to change depending on the exact values things are assigned, obviously.) And a lasgun taking out 1% of a landraider's health really shouldn't be a big deal.

Besides, the problem isn't things having trouble wounding other things. The problem is anything can wound anything.

I hear this a lot from people who want tanks to be totally immune to small arms fire, but are small arms vs tanks actually a problem? How often are you losing land raiders to lasguns and splinter rifles? Is it fair to say that it's more the principle of the thing than an actual problem that you encounter on the tabletop?


no S3-9 don't really make meaningful anything, nor would increasing T exacerbate the issues i'm talking about. we've literally already had this system, or at least a system that is very similar, and it worked much better for delineating the difference between anti-infantry weapons, and anti-armor/monster weapons.

some weapons would go up in S for sure, but most would not. things like the railgun and vanquisher would go up to S11 or 12. Macroplasma could go to S8 overcharged to S9 for example, and the really big stuff that are the primaries for superheavies could then go up to 13 or 14. with super heavy anti-infantry weapons like the mega bolter moving up to S7 to really shred elite/heavy infantry.

as it stands the difference in how easy it is to wound light, medium, heavy, and super heavy, is negligible for the most part, with only very light vehicles like ATVs, and sentinels feeling noticeably more flimsy than other vehicles.

   
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 waefre_1 wrote:
 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Wyldhunt wrote:

Besides, the problem isn't things having trouble wounding other things. The problem is anything can wound anything.

I hear this a lot from people who want tanks to be totally immune to small arms fire, but are small arms vs tanks actually a problem? How often are you losing land raiders to lasguns and splinter rifles? Is it fair to say that it's more the principle of the thing than an actual problem that you encounter on the tabletop?


Currently, a guardsman with a Lascannon will do .17*3.5 (so about .6) wounds to the upcoming Chaos Land Raider per shot.

A guardsmen with a lasgun and FRFSRF (and in Rapid Fire) will do 0.15 wounds to the same target.

In other words, the Lascannon is only about four times as effective as a guy with a rifle against one of the highest durability targets in the game (T9, 2+, AoC).

So, considering you can get well over four times as many guardsmen as you can lascannons in most lists...

...who are firing AP0 D1 weapons from 12" away on T3 W1 5+ bodies (at least until the new 'dex drops), and who need nearly a full squad to do a single actual wound to the LR (D is an int, not a float), and they need an Order to do that (something you haven't given the Lascannon), and if you want to do more than a single wound you're basically going to need to at least partially bubble wrap the LR with Guardsmen (which would be trivial to prevent if other units or terrain are present)...
Even if statistically a low probability situation, the dumb is still dumb. It's not an action troops should be capable of doing against heavily armored vehicles. If you want more AT capability on infantry, give them Krak grenades and better rules around using them against armor.

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Tyel wrote:I don't mind people blazing away with an infantry squad and doing 1-2 wounds to a tank. Its an inefficient action in most circumstances. When Hammer of the Emperor came out people did the whole "what if you could get 100s of Guardsmen in FRFSRF and rapid fire and delete everything" - and many weeks on, it seems safe to say "no, no you can't". Even things like S5+ AP-3~ 2 damage with stacked rerolls seems less like a tank killer than it was back in 8th.

Really though the problem is that anti-tank guns are a mess - and vehicle defensive profiles are likewise a mess.

Consider the Autocannon base. 2 shots, S7 AP-1 2 damage. There just isn't a defensive profile into which this is very good. Its about 15% better than a lascannon into say a Raider (T6 4+/5++) - where the Lascannon's higher S and AP is wasted. It might be a bit more reliable - but just as D6 damage weapons can turn up as 1s, they can also turn up as 5s and 6s. Points generate a bit of an improvement (i.e. an autocannon is usually cheaper than a lascannon) - but its marginal on the marginal. (By contrast, shoot a lascannon into say a Rhino, and its 2.3 times as good as an Autocannon - i.e. miles better.)

If T6 and only a 5+/6+ was a more common profile, perhaps there would be a spot for the Autocannon. But there isn't. And as said, the few things you'd expect to be vulnerable like buggies have -1 damage for inexplicable reasons.

Imo infantry works better. Because you have T3, T4, T5. And by and large, higher T & higher Sv go together. So you can have bags of S3, S4 shooting that are your horde clearers. You can have your S5 AP-3 2 damage guns which are your anti-Marine weapons (and okay into Custodes, Crisis suits, Tyranid warriors etc). And this is because of how the maths of the wound table works. The problem is you need T6 to be "T3" of the vehicle world - and it just isn't.

The fact GW is now going "uh... well "real anti-tank" should be S12-S14, ignore all saves" is further skewing things.

Well put. Have an exalt.

Insectum7 wrote:Even if statistically a low probability situation, the dumb is still dumb. It's not an action troops should be capable of doing against heavily armored vehicles. If you want more AT capability on infantry, give them Krak grenades and better rules around using them against armor.

I'm sure you and I have gone 'round on this point before, but I disagree. Mechanically, making vehicles completely immune to big swaths of the enemy army is non-interactive and promotes skew that I'd consider to result in a less enjoyable gaming experience. Narratively, why not? The lore on exactly what a lasgun is, how it works, and how effective it is against various targets is all over the place. We can all agree that a single lasbolt isn't going to core a land raider and explode its fuel tank, but is it unreasonable to think that massed lasbolts might mess up some treads or damage a turret or exacerbate the damage inflicted on an armor plate by a krak missile?

My concern is that efforts to make vehicles completely immune to low strength weapons would make the game worse for the sake of upholding a narrow view of what losing a Wound means.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
johnpjones1775 wrote:

as it stands the difference in how easy it is to wound light, medium, heavy, and super heavy, is negligible for the most part, with only very light vehicles like ATVs, and sentinels feeling noticeably more flimsy than other vehicles.

Can't say that has been my experience. My T8 wraith lord gets a lot less nervous around krak missiles than my T7 falcon and T6 vypers do. S9 lascannons feel a lot more confident firing on the wraith lord than the krak missile does. But if you want a russ to feel significantly more durable than a chimera or for a lascannon to feel more lethal than a krak missile, I still say you should be looking at the Damage and Wounds stats rather than Strength and Toughness.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/06/26 23:19:42



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 Insectum7 wrote:
 waefre_1 wrote:
 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Spoiler:
Wyldhunt wrote:

Besides, the problem isn't things having trouble wounding other things. The problem is anything can wound anything.

I hear this a lot from people who want tanks to be totally immune to small arms fire, but are small arms vs tanks actually a problem? How often are you losing land raiders to lasguns and splinter rifles? Is it fair to say that it's more the principle of the thing than an actual problem that you encounter on the tabletop?


Currently, a guardsman with a Lascannon will do .17*3.5 (so about .6) wounds to the upcoming Chaos Land Raider per shot.

A guardsmen with a lasgun and FRFSRF (and in Rapid Fire) will do 0.15 wounds to the same target.

In other words, the Lascannon is only about four times as effective as a guy with a rifle against one of the highest durability targets in the game (T9, 2+, AoC).

So, considering you can get well over four times as many guardsmen as you can lascannons in most lists...

...who are firing AP0 D1 weapons from 12" away on T3 W1 5+ bodies (at least until the new 'dex drops), and who need nearly a full squad to do a single actual wound to the LR (D is an int, not a float), and they need an Order to do that (something you haven't given the Lascannon), and if you want to do more than a single wound you're basically going to need to at least partially bubble wrap the LR with Guardsmen (which would be trivial to prevent if other units or terrain are present)...
Even if statistically a low probability situation, the dumb is still dumb. It's not an action troops should be capable of doing against heavily armored vehicles. If you want more AT capability on infantry, give them Krak grenades and better rules around using them against armor.

Honestly, I won't disagree with you on that - I'd prefer if there were something tied to the <VEHICLE> keyword that would impose a cutoff for low-S weapons doing damage (based on T/Sv). That said, I expect that it's a rare enough occurrence that we should probably be focusing on other issues first, especially where tanks and durability are involved (as I understand it, lasguns wounding Titans has little to do with why vehicles aren't fielded very often, and durability fixes might naturally prevent lasguns wounding Titans anyways).

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2022/06/26 23:24:52


 
   
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Wyldhunt wrote:
Mechanically, making vehicles completely immune to big swaths of the enemy army is non-interactive and promotes skew that I'd consider to result in a less enjoyable gaming experience.


So why not address the root of the problem and deal with the skew? Go back to a single FOC with only troops scoring objectives and delete knights as a playable army. Then you don't have the ability to take nothing but vehicles and if you do somehow find a way you'll lose every game because you can't score objectives.

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CadianSgtBob wrote:
Wyldhunt wrote:
Mechanically, making vehicles completely immune to big swaths of the enemy army is non-interactive and promotes skew that I'd consider to result in a less enjoyable gaming experience.


So why not address the root of the problem and deal with the skew? Go back to a single FOC with only troops scoring objectives and delete knights as a playable army. Then you don't have the ability to take nothing but vehicles and if you do somehow find a way you'll lose every game because you can't score objectives.
Because that would invalidate tons of existing armies for one.

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CadianSgtBob wrote:
Wyldhunt wrote:
Mechanically, making vehicles completely immune to big swaths of the enemy army is non-interactive and promotes skew that I'd consider to result in a less enjoyable gaming experience.


So why not address the root of the problem and deal with the skew? Go back to a single FOC with only troops scoring objectives and delete knights as a playable army. Then you don't have the ability to take nothing but vehicles and if you do somehow find a way you'll lose every game because you can't score objectives.

Skew is a can of worms that I don't really have a good solution for. The FOC definitely isn't the solution. Guard can fit tanks into every slot except troops (who can take dedicated transports), so it's not like the FOC prevents you from stuffing your army with almost entirely tanks. Plus, tanks aren't the only kind of skew; a 'nid list can carpet the table with bodies using an FOC. Skew could easily be its own very lengthy thread, and I don't really have a good suggestion for preventing it that doesn't also severely limit how you can theme your army.

Only scoring with troops was its own kind of hell in 5th edition, and I do not want to go back to that awfulness.

Despite not having a good solution for the problem of skew, however, I feel like making vehicles immune to low strength attacks would make the problem worse. Basically, there's a cushion for how much you can skew your list before it creates a frustrating experience for a well-rounded vanilla list. Currently, that cushion is pretty thick. My bolters and shuriken catapults aren't going to contribute a lot against your vehicles, but they will contribute. But if vehicles go back to being straight up immune to bolters and shurikens, then every gun in my army that can't hurt your tanks feels like a liability. Every time I splashed in a flamer instead of more meltas is a waste. Feels bad, man.


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nekooni wrote:
I'd say there're enough tricks that give +1 towound to justify higher T values than T10, there's no need to have a cap at all - but right now, id say T12 for a tough superheavy/titan sounds right.


Personally everything that's a Land Raider and larger should be T9. Like the Macharius', Baneblades, the smaller titans, smaller fortifications, maybe the bigger knights. The only things that should be T10 is the biggest fortifications and the largest titans.
   
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 Aenar wrote:
Lethality is not a bug, it's a feature.
When a 5 turn game is often decided by the end of turn 2, it's a bug, not a feaure.

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 H.B.M.C. wrote:
 Aenar wrote:
Lethality is not a bug, it's a feature.
When a 5 turn game is often decided by the end of turn 2, it's a bug, not a feaure.


What is your evidence for games being decided turn 2? If you took out the previously crazy books what do you think the game looks like?
   
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 H.B.M.C. wrote:
 Aenar wrote:
Lethality is not a bug, it's a feature.
When a 5 turn game is often decided by the end of turn 2, it's a bug, not a feaure.


Not really. I honestly don't remember the last time I've played a game that was decided before top of 3 and most of my games ended at top of 4 or 5.

First, it doesn't really happen that often. We're not in 7th or 8th anymore thankfully. And second, it will always be a possibility when players can bring lists who look totally rock/paper/scissor to each other. As long as this kind of one sided game is possible early victories would also be possible. And bringing totally skew or anti meta lists is definitely a feature, something that players wants.

Then of course it's a dice game and there's also the possibility of someone rolling crazy for a couple of turns screwing all the odds and deciding the game too early, maybe helped by some mistakes from the opponent.

 
   
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Wrt small arms not killing tanks...
don't get me started on Hail of Doom. I witnessed an Eldar list that brought no non-shuriken weapons to the game this weekend. Max strength was 6, AP sometimes -3, damage 2, but most of the guns were strength 4 with 1 damage.

Hail of Doom shredded tanks. A guardian squad shooting took 5, sometimes 7 wounds off a tank fairly reliably. It was honestly embarrassing to watch.
   
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 Aenar wrote:
Lethality is not a bug, it's a feature.
If 40K is so lethal, like it is right now, you can put a lot of minis on the table, have very granular rules and individual customization options and still finish a standard 2000 pts game within 2:30h.
If it were any less lethal, in order to finish within that magical timeframe that works so well for events, you would need to either change the rules or play with less toys.
And guess what: GW wants us to buy more minis, not less.

There's no reason lowering the lethality of the game means it would take significantly longer. One of 40k's main problems is how stupidly clunky the system is for resolving pretty much anything, epitomised by the frequent need to roll dice to see how many dice you roll. Strats, WLTs and the huge number of special rules contribute just as much to the game time as anything else. You could have games be less lethal and take less time by removing a lot of that bloat.

If the reason for creating such a hyper-lethal game is to paper over the cracks elsewhere in your system, maybe you need to take a look at those cracks?
   
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Wyldhunt wrote:

Insectum7 wrote:Even if statistically a low probability situation, the dumb is still dumb. It's not an action troops should be capable of doing against heavily armored vehicles. If you want more AT capability on infantry, give them Krak grenades and better rules around using them against armor.

I'm sure you and I have gone 'round on this point before, but I disagree. Mechanically, making vehicles completely immune to big swaths of the enemy army is non-interactive and promotes skew that I'd consider to result in a less enjoyable gaming experience. Narratively, why not? The lore on exactly what a lasgun is, how it works, and how effective it is against various targets is all over the place. We can all agree that a single lasbolt isn't going to core a land raider and explode its fuel tank, but is it unreasonable to think that massed lasbolts might mess up some treads or damage a turret or exacerbate the damage inflicted on an armor plate by a krak missile.
There's literally decades of precedent showing how a lasgun can't do anything against tanks, and the game worked fine, wonderfully even, through the 25 years of having vehicles being immune to small arms. I played 2nd through 7th, personally, and skew being a problem was never a fault of lasguns being unable to hurt a tank.

Make rules around the fact that armor needs to be supported by infantry. Give Infantry the cabability to deal with armor in better ways than emptying clips into it, and this will address any issues created by skew.

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